How2Vote Political and Social Activism app for Android description
How2Vote is an independent, non-partisan comparison tool for Australian federal elections.
NOT A GOVERNMENT APP
How2Vote is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or authorised by the Australian Electoral Commission, the Parliament of Australia or any other government entity, and it does not provide or facilitate government services.
Answer 50 propositions parliament has actually voted on. The app shows how closely each party's recorded parliamentary votes match your positions — against the candidates on your ballot, in official ballot order. Then build your own voting plan: nothing is ranked for you and no preference is recommended. You author your own preference order.
WORKS FULLY OFFLINE
The complete dataset ships inside the app — questions, scoring and your card all work with no connection, including at a polling place with no signal. The app goes online only for what you ask it to: sending the contact form, contributing to the anonymous research if you opt in, or opening a link out to the AEC or They Vote For You.
BUILT FROM THE PARLIAMENTARY RECORD
Comparisons are built from recorded parliamentary votes (public Hansard data via They Vote For You), not campaign statements. Every proposition links to the parliamentary divisions behind it, so everything you are shown can be checked at the source.
OFFICIAL SOURCES
Every piece of electoral and parliamentary information in the app comes from these public sources, and can be checked against them. This is the complete list:
- Candidates, ballot paper order, electoral divisions and election dates — Australian Electoral Commission, 2025 federal election downloads: https://www.aec.gov.au/election/fe25/downloads-statistics.htm
- Electoral division boundaries used for the maps — Australian Electoral Commission, electoral boundaries GIS downloads: https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/gis/gis_datadownload.htm
- The parliamentary record the vote comparisons are drawn from (Hansard divisions) — Parliament of Australia: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard
- The compiled division-by-division voting records the app actually reads — They Vote For You, by the OpenAustralia Foundation: https://theyvoteforyou.org.au
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No account. No sign-up. Your answers and weights stay on your device.
NEUTRAL BY CONSTRUCTION
The interface is strictly two-tone, so match quality is never encoded as party colour. The scoring method is public, deterministic and reproducible, and the app is open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later. https://github.com/National-Digital/how2vote.au
Authorised by General Consulting Services Pty Ltd as trustee for the Australian Business Trust, trading as National Digital, Gold Coast, Queensland.
